MIT's inForm: Reaching Out On A Different Level

     Imagine a small ordinary ball on a table.  I challenge you to move it without directly touching it.  And no, you're not allowed to use strings.  Go, I'll wait here.  I assume you must be thinking that such task is impossible to do.  Tell that to MIT.

Nothing is impossible under--er, around--the sun.
 

         What you saw is Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Tangible Media Group's (MIT TMG) invention: InForm.  The shape-changing graphical user interface has been created by Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer, under the guidance of Hiroshi Ishii.  InForm is a dynamic shape display that can shape-shift to render 3D content physically.  The surface is made up of around 1000 long, vertically assembled square sticks called pins, which are arranged in a square grid.  A projector mounted above the surface provides context to the shape-shifting pins, giving them color and highlighting depth.

No hocus-pocus, just pure engineering.

 

     Each pin can be moved up and down individually by actuators to create a topographical rendering of an object -- it might be a city plan, a data visualization or simply the outline of someone's hands. The physical form of the surface can be augmented with mapped projections, thanks to an overhead Kinect and projector.

The team at MIT that is behind inFORM explain it as a "Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table's surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-mit-group-realm-interaction-future.html#jCp

The team at MIT that is behind inFORM explain it as a "Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table's surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-mit-group-realm-interaction-future.html#jCp

Bringing a new meaning to video calls

Applications of MIT's InForm

    

      With this, urban planners and architects can view 3D designs physically and, thus, can easily show their ideas.  The Marble Answering Machine, designed by Durrell Bishop, is another useful application of InForm where it somehow redefines the usual appearance and mechanism of a typical answering machine.  Voice messages which are represented as physical marbles. Marbles are stored at the top of a little "hill" created by the interface. When the person receives a message, a marble is manipulated by the pins and moved into a small "well" at the bottom of the slope. To listen to the message, users pick up the marble from the new message well and place it inside a separate "play" well. Once played, the machine moves into the "old message" well. It can be deleted by being deposited back at the top of the hill.

According to MIT TMG's website, InForm is a step toward their vision of Radical Atoms:

 To address this challenge, we presented our new vision, “Radical Atoms”, in 2012. Radical Atoms takes a leap beyond Tangible Bits by assuming a hypothetical generation of materials that can change form and appearance dynamically, becoming as reconfigurable as pixels on a screen.

Radical Atoms is a computationally transformable and reconfigurable material that is bidirectionally coupled with an underlying digital model (bits) so that dynamic changes of physical form can be reflected in digital states in real time, and vice versa.

Radical Atoms is the future material that can transform their shape, conform to constraints, and inform the users of their affordances. Radical Atoms is a vision for the future of human-material interaction, in which all digital information has a physical manifestation so that we can interact directly with it. We no longer think of designing the interface, but rather of the interface itself as material. We may call it “Material User Interface (MUI).”

     For the mean time, InForm is built on a small scale.  But just think of all the possibilities and changes in can make!  We're living in a 3D world anyway.



Sources:

Owano, Nancy.  MIT group's shape display steps to new realm in interaction future.  Web.  phys.org.  Retrieved 17 December


Solon, Olivia.  MIT researchers develop InForm, a shape-shifting display surface. Web.  wired.co.uk.
Retrieved 17 December


Souppouris, Aaron. MIT's shapeshifting display lets you reach out and touch someone. Web.  theverge.com.  Retrieved 17 December 2013

tangible.media.mit.edu

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